The Irish standard., 1887-01-29
cATACoMBS OF IRELAND.
Father Bernard 0'Reilly's Midnight
Mass at Glengariff, in the
County Cork.
IRISH SCENERY INCOMPATIBLE E.
The Peoples Sublime Devotion tt
the Faith Of. Their
Fathers. -0

the Faith OF Their
Fathers. ..
RoCHE's HOTEL, GLENGAR1FF, Dec.
30.-Two years ago, at this very time, l
wrote from Dublin, as the battle be-
tween landlordism and the agricultural
population of Ireland-the few crushed
and ground down remnants of the an
cient Celtic race on this island-was
growing in intensity. A fierce cam
paign of evictions was then going on
with redoubled pitilessness all over
this unhappy country, and the horrors
of death by starvation and cold threat
ened the thousands who were doomed
to be cast out homeless, shelterless,
penniless as the rigcrs of winter in
creased and the blessed season of
Christmas was dawning upon the
world.
Siuce then the struggle for existence
has gone on all over this desolated soil,
the civilized world watching the pro-
gress of this fearful drama, as the
assembled Greeks at Athens were wont
tt watch in the old classic age of liberty
the unfolding of some of the grand tril-
ogies Eschylus, Euripides or Sopho-
cles. recounting the fateful catastro-
phies preceding and accompanying the
extinction of the old families of heroes
and demi-gods. Aye, it is no less than
the utter extinction of the last hope of
Irish nationality, the blotting out
from their native soil of the last gener-
alton of Catholic Celts, that Lord Sails
bury, bounded on by the Times and
the st. James Gazette, is now attempt
ing, and now. perhaps, on the point of
achieving success.
A certain nameless dread of such a
success falls upon my spirit as 1 go
among the novels of the poor round
about me here, on Lord Bantry's estate
and the lands of his uncle, Mr.. White, of
Glengariff Castle. What are these how
els in their utter and lndescribable
squalor, wretchedness, and misery but
the last stage of degradation to which
the blind, unreasoning, suicidal brutal
ity of Irish landlordism has brought a
Christian and a civilized people? What
is the condition of the heroic tenants of
these novels? Half clad in midwinter,
shivering over the slowly burning peat
fire, in their low, narrow, windowless,
mud-foored and smoky dens, but the
condition of men reduced to more
comfortless and hopeless condition than
the Greenland Esquimaux or the ia
mine-decimated tribes along the Mac
kenzie River and around Hudson Bay?
At least Indian and Esquimaux have
no greedy landlords or landlord agents
watching every deer that is slain in the
chase, every fish taken from the waters
of river and ocean, to claim the chief
portion thereof as a something due by
hunter and fisherman to the lords and
owners of the soil. What the natives of
our most remote northern regions can
wrest from the land by culture and the
chase or gain from it's streams is all their
own.
But the half-fed animals, the COW, the
calf, the pig, the fowls, which yonder
mountaineers, the tenants OF the Earl
of Bantry, shelter beneath the same
roof as their children, are the only safe
guard under Gods providence which
stands between their poor families and
eviction, the only means with which to
purchase for another six or twelve
months the doubtful comforts of the
roof that covers them, of the cold naked
walls that shelter them against the
storm. Do not blame the poor lone
widow, the smoke of whose cottage I
can see from this, If the only piece of
furniture within her dark 5urrow-a
narrow box filled with ancient straw
affords resting place to the few fowls
she manages to feed, as well as a bed to
herself by night. These fowls have
given her wherewith to satisfy the land
lord, who was won't to exact his rent OF
the last farthing; who cares not whe.
ther she, poor old Peggy, lives or dies;
and who will never take thought Of |
repairing the thatch on the roof, and
stopping the downpour of the incessant
rain on the head Of the meek and ven
erable sufferer.
Venerable! do I say lts Yes, and
most truly. Listenl Yesterday morn
ing two ladies from the hotel, the one
an American and the other the charita-
bic and pious mistress of the house, sal
lied forth with provisions and other
comforts to bring some brightness to
the most cherries hearths in our neigh
borhood. Old Peggy's hut was the first
visited.
''She did not expect u.s. my inform
ant said. s We had to stoop to get in
side the low, narrow doorway. The
place was dark and filled with smoke,
and over the few burning sods Of peat